Processing facilities, such as manufacturing plants, chemical plants, crude oil refineries, ore processing plants and the like, are often managed using process control systems. Among other operations, process control systems typically manage the use of motors, valves, and other industrial equipment in the processing facilities.
In conventional process control systems, controllers are often used to control one or more processes that are occurring or being implemented. The controllers may, for example, monitor the operation of the industrial equipment, provide control signals to the industrial equipment, and generate alarms when malfunctions are detected. Conventional process control systems are often responsible for monitoring and controlling numerous process variables, which generally represent characteristics of the process being monitored and controlled. Human operators are often responsible for monitoring and adjusting the controllers in the process control systems, thereby helping to ensure that the controllers are accurately modeling and controlling the processes.
Field instruments, such as temperature sensors and the like, provide useful information about the process system that may be used by the process control system. If these field instruments were wireless, the cost of deployment as compared with wired alternatives would be dramatically reduced. However, because of the possibility of losing the wireless signal and, as a result, the corresponding information provided to the process control system, typical process systems implement wireless field instruments only in areas where there would be no potential harm should the wireless signal be lost. Because of this, the number of wireless field instruments that are typically deployed in a process system is limited, reducing the potential cost-savings associated with wireless technology.